


Yesterday

by eggstasy



Series: Post Season 13 - Recuperation [1]
Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-29
Updated: 2015-10-29
Packaged: 2018-04-28 18:01:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,598
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5100350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eggstasy/pseuds/eggstasy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dr. Grey can’t remember having ever been so busy, which is saying a lot considering she’s been the CMO for the Federal Army of Chorus since almost the beginning of the civil war.  She supposed that she wouldn’t be so busy if she would delegate a little more effectively, but she has to perform the initial assessments herself.  Not out of lack of qualified medical personnel; the rebel medics were rough around the edges, but smart and resourceful and her own support personnel were very familiar with what she wanted to see in an assessment.</p><p>But these patients are special.  A handful, but special.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Yesterday

They find Caboose on the way from the hangar.  He’s clutching his shoulder, but there are a lot more dead soldiers around him than there are alive and the remaining two stand over him, arguing over whether to shoot him or bring him to Hargrove.  Washington feels something cool and calm settle over his mind as he and Carolina sneak up behind the last two Charon troops and cleanly snap their necks.  Just like a weapon.  Maybe Locus wasn’t completely wrong.

“Andersmith,” is all Washington has to say before the lieutenant is at his captain’s side, drawing his good arm over his own shoulders and helping him to his feet.  “Caboose, we’ll be right back.  Smith, get him to transport.”

“Yes _sir._ ”  

“Church,” Caboose calls after their backs, in tears.  “Wash- _Church-_ ”

They don’t have time to ask.  Carolina takes point.

The path of destruction follows along the hallway and Washington can see the signs Caboose’s berserker mode in the dents in the wall and the broken armor of dead or dying Charon soldiers.  They pick reinforcements off from a distance, group by group and as they turn down a corridor past a laser-cut blast door, they see a hallway pockmarked with bullets and littered with bodies.  None of them colorful.  Someone is still firing inside the office at the end of the hall.

Washington and Carolina break into a run when the gunfire stops.

They have to pull bodies away from the door and toss them aside.  Washington takes point, hurdles over the table and is greeted by more bodies, a lot more than he’d expected.

Washington’s heart leaps into his throat when he sees that familiar aqua on the ground.  He goes to Tucker first, turns him over and almost drops him when he sees the gleam of Maine’s domed helmet.

“You’re late,” Sarge pants above him, leaning on his shotgun like it’s a cane.  There’s smoke coming from the barrel still, little wisps of it; he’d been the one firing, of course.

“Sitrep,” Carolina demands.

“Help!”  Simmons waves a hand from over behind what looks like a trophy stand.  Washington glances over to see Doc with him, Grif between them, and a lot of blood that Carolina doesn’t even pause to take in as she investigates.

“Prep him for evac.”  Carolina touches her helmet and Washington returns his attention to- to what has to be Tucker.

“Two stretchers.”  Wash ignores everything else (cool, calm, weapon) as he pops the seals of Maine’s- Tucker’s helmet and eases it off of him.  Tucker is unconscious but there’s no blood visible, none in his mouth, nose or ears.  No visible injuries.  “What the hell is this?” he asks lowly, glancing up at Sarge.

“Fancy suit that Chairman guy jimmied together,” Sarge tells him after a moment, staring over where Carolina and Doc are getting their gauntlets progressively more red as they tend to Grif, Simmons hovering nearby.

“Can we get three stretchers?” Donut calls weakly from the back corner.  He gestures to the robot slumped beside him.  “Lopez got his legs blown off.”

“Got all them Freelancer doodads the Meta had, and a few more.”  Sarge is leaning his weight heavily on one side, Washington notices, but he’s refusing to sit down.  “That dome shield thing really came in handy.  But the damn Blue just dropped right before you got here!  We weren’t even done winnin’ yet!”

Tucker ran that many armor mods-  

The coolness turns to cold and Washington tries to pull up Tucker’s biofeed.  His suit isn’t syncing up to Wash’s detection software.  Hargrove must have had the frequencies modified.  Wash leans down and nudges his external mic right against Tucker’s mouth, cradling his head as gently as he can.  Tucker doesn’t even move, his dreadlocks bunched up between Wash’s fingers and catching on the edges of his armor and Wash can almost feel the nanoseconds clicking by as he waits to hear something, anything, any kind of-

_Hff._

An exhale.  And an inhale following, and again and again after that, and they’re steady.  Wash doesn’t hold back his shaking sigh of relief as he sits back on his heels.  “Tucker’s alive.  I think he’s just unconscious.”

“Where the hell are my stretchers?” Carolina snaps aloud.  Grif’s helmet is off and his breathing is too uneven and wet.

“Carolina,” Wash says.  His voice sounds far away in his ears as he continues, “Tucker ran suit mods.  A lot of suit mods.”

Carolina’s silence is brittle.  “Epsilon?  … _Church_ , respond.”

No answer.

The lieutenants sans Andersmith arrive with stretchers, several Fed troopers along with them.  It takes four soldiers to hold the stretcher with Grif securely, but both Tucker and Grif are whisked away to the first Pelican with strict instructions not to wait for them, to take them and Dr. Grey to the surface immediately for emergency medical treatment.  Washington has to stop himself from going with Tucker.  He can see Simmons doing the same for Grif.  The doctor needs as much room for medical personnel as she can get.

Categorizing the injuries of the rest of the troopers is easy.  Doc came out in the best shape; bruised and armor seared from the leftover plasma of a sticky grenade, but no injuries.  Donut has a wrenched knee and a bump on his head.  Lopez, as reported, is without legs at all, but they’re nearby and mostly in complete pieces.  Sarge is sure he can attach them later.

After Washington manages to bully Sarge into sitting down and removing his battered chest plates, he can see why the colonel had been leaning.  His entire side is bruised from his arm socket to his hip.  “You might have cracked ribs,” Washington reports, pressing gingerly against the discoloration.

“Hrmph!”  Sarge grunts and shoves Washington away from him, holding his side.  “Don’t trust a Blue’s diagnosis.  Why don’t you make yourself useful and get some of my men out of here?”

Wash helps Donut to the docking bay while Carolina helps Simmons.  Jensen and Bitters return to Washington on his way back to get Doc, Lopez and Sarge to report that the ship is swept.  Hargrove is gone, as is one of the escape pods.

“That bitch,” Carolina mutters.  Washington silently agrees.

They return to Sarge pulling Lopez up by himself and Carolina almost knocks him out in her irritation.  Wash and Carolina carry Lopez between them and Sarge limps alongside, Doc straggling behind them, oddly twitchy and quiet.

“Sheila,” Lopez says suddenly, jerking his arms away from Wash and Carolina so hard they almost drop him.

Carolina growls and grabs onto his frame, trying to pull him back up.  “What?  Sheila?”

“Tenemos que llegar a ella, Filss es Sheila, no podemos-”

Washington and Carolina have to stop when Lopez tries to pull away from them again.  “Sarge, what’s Lopez saying?”  Washington holds up a hand.  “Never mind.  I just realized how stupid that question is.  Lopez, really simple middle school Spanish.”

Somehow, without teeth to grit, Lopez still sounds like he’s growling through them.  “Filss.  Esta.  Aqui.”

“Filss is here?”

“Si.  Filss. Va. Conmigo.”

“-Va is go, right?  Go with you?  You want us to bring Filss with us?”

Lopez heaves a relieved sigh.  “ _Si_.  Cristo.”

“We’ll sweep the ship's systems before we leave,” Carolina promises, “but our first priority is to get all of you out of here and our secondary is to locate Hargrove.”  Lopez tries to pull away and Carolina tightens her grip.  “Look, I swear, we’ll get her out.  She’s a friend of mine too.  Just not right now.”

 

* * *

 

Palomo is in the hangar, perched on some crates and crying with Donut’s arm around his shoulders.

“Lieutenant,” Washington snaps, helping push Lopez up into Carolina’s arms in the belly of the Pelican, “pull yourself together.  We still have work to do.”

“Captain Tucker’s gonna die!” Palomo wails.  Donut pats him on the back.

“Trust me, it takes a lot to kill Tucker!  He’s been hurt worse than this.  Heck, _Tex_ has hurt Tucker worse than this and she was on his team!”  Donut hops up onto his one good leg, accepting Washington’s help over to the Pelican.  “I mean, not that the Blue Team really does all that well with watching the friendly fire.  I think Caboose has even killed one of them!  There’s conflicting accounts on that.”

“Not helping, Donut,” Wash mutters as Sarge reaches down and pulls Donut up with a grunt.

“Palomo, for Christ’s sake, shut up,” Bitters snaps.  His grip on his rifle is tight and his shoulders rigid.  “Let’s just sweep this place already and go.”  He turns with a sharp tap of his boots to continue on his patrol circuit, Andersmith glancing back at Palomo before following.

Jensen shifts her weight awkwardly next to Palomo before reaching out and pulling on his arm.  “Come on, Palomo.  Let’s finish up so we can go back.  Everyone’s probably celebrating without us.”

Washington watches them shuffle out.  Jumps when a hand comes to rest on his shoulder, but sighs when he sees it’s just Carolina.  “Yeah Boss?”

“Get going.”  She jerks her head at the waiting Pelican.  “There’s room for one more.  I can finish up here.”

Washington hesitates.  “I can stay.”

“They’ll probably need to you keep Caboose calm anyway.  Go.”

Carolina doesn’t believe in bad feelings, but watching Wash haul himself up into the Pelican definitely doesn’t make her feel any better.

The last time Church had gone unresponsive he’d only been running the bubble shield.  The time before that, it was just a handful of her own mods.  If Tucker had run everything she had and more?

“Focus,” Carolina mutters to herself, sliding her battle rifle into her hands and flexing her fingers against the grip.  She turns to follow the Lieutenants on their patrol.  “Focus.”  

Worry for Epsilon could come later.

 

* * *

 

Wash has learned that Caboose has two types of crying.  Three, really, though two sound almost exactly alike.  One is his fake crying.  He does that when he’s not actually upset, but upset at the idea of becoming upset because something is happening that he doesn’t like.  He doesn’t use it often, and Wash has found that making him run laps when he does helps him burn off the negative energy in a more constructive way.

Another is for real crying but it’s generally not serious.  It’s when he’s feeling overloaded with emotion and has to let it out somehow, so his sobs are big and theatrical and dramatic _boo hoo hoo_ s that really just need a friendly “there there” and a pat on the back to go away.  Usually that crying is the kind that accompanies his loud, mournful bouts of semi-depression that come with Church vanishing on him again, not having juice, his bedsheets being the wrong color and any other number of things that range from inconsequential to life-threatening.  Caboose is generally okay when doing either of those two types of crying.

Caboose is currently crying and it’s neither of the two.

He’d been shockingly docile up to the point where Dr. Grey had popped his shoulder back into its socket.  The pain had made him yelp and Washington had felt it like a knife in the chest, but he’d been still afterwards as she’d gently maneuvered his arm into a sling.  Wash hadn’t even realized he was crying until he heard Caboose sniffle hard and he’d looked up to see big, fat tears rolling down his face.

“Oh geez,” Wash sighs as he comes over to the cot and sits beside him.  “Talk to me, buddy.”

Caboose bows his head and the tears come faster, hiccups shaking his chest and making him wince when they jostle his shoulder.  “Church- Church wasn’t talking, and Tucker said he couldn’t find him…”

Wash wishes there was something reassuring he could say, but he’d just checked in with the techs currently going over Tucker’s armor.  It was taking too long to extract the data; almost like it was just sitting there, unthinking.  They couldn’t find anything complex enough to constitute a smart AI, even just a fragment.  Wash didn’t know what that all meant but it couldn’t mean anything good.

A weight rests on his own shoulder and Wash startles back out of the memory into the present.  Caboose presses his face to Wash’s shoulder guard which can’t be comfortable, but that doesn’t seem to matter.

“I’m sorry Caboose,” Wash murmurs.  He reaches up only a little hesitantly to rub a hand up and down his back.  “I promise, as soon as we know something for sure, the first person I’ll tell is you.”

“Thank you, Agent Washington.”  Caboose doesn’t move for a while and Wash lets him stay, tears and snot and all.

 

* * *

 

Dr. Grey can’t remember having ever been so busy, which is saying a lot considering she’s been the CMO for the Federal Army of Chorus since almost the beginning of the civil war.  She supposed that she wouldn’t be so busy if she would delegate a little more effectively, but she has to perform the initial assessments herself.  Not out of lack of qualified medical personnel; the rebel medics were rough around the edges, but smart and resourceful and her own support personnel were very familiar with what she wanted to see in an assessment.

But these patients are special.  A handful, but special.

Grif requires the most of her attention; she leaves the surgery prep to her support staff and leaves to assess Tucker.  Once she determines no swelling of the brain and no need for surgery she moves on to Caboose, then darts down the halls to the Reds.  Donut needs bedrest and a knee brace.  Sarge needs X-rays to check for internal bleeding.  Simmons need bed rest and possibly some sedatives, but his cybernetic replacements will have to wait so long as his life isn’t threatened.

Captain Grif crashes and she has to rush back to surgery prep.  It takes almost too long to get his heart started again, and he’s wheeled immediately into surgery and Dr. Grey has to leave the Reds and Blues in the care of her medical staff so she can concentrate her full attention on the open chest cavity in front of her.  Well- partially open.  She’ll be opening it more neatly in a moment.

Hours later and with a lot less biofoam in her stores, Grif is somewhat stable and wheeled into the ICU and Dr. Grey takes just a moment to breathe, remove her bloodied gloves and find some water to drink.  She debates for a few seconds on telling the Reds anything regarding Grif’s condition when it could so easily go either way.  Simmons especially; he doesn’t seem like his heart could handle any particularly bad news.

She goes to tell them anyway.

Sarge takes it silently, which says a lot about how he really feels.  Donut begins sobbing; Dr. Grey appreciates more than Sarge’s stoicism.  Emoting so openly might be looked at as uncomfortable by a lot of the soldiers she works with but Dr. Grey knows better.

Simmons surprises her, though.  She’d expected him to collapse into a nervous wreck, or to at least pepper her with questions and concerns before quietly melting down in a corner somewhere but he doesn’t.  He slides out of bed, finds a crutch and asks her to show him to Grif’s room.

“I can find a wheelchair,” she offers as he hobbles for the door.  He doesn’t answer her.

The doorway to Grif’s room isn’t large enough for him to both stand there and for her to slip past him, so Dr. Grey nudges Simmons in the back until he stumbles inside, then whisks around Grif’s bed to examine his charts on the display by the wall.

Simmons sits down hard, staring at Grif.  The monitoring equipment beeps loudly in the silence of the room.  “He’s on life support?”

“For now,” Dr. Grey points out.  “To give his lungs a rest.  We're really fortunate that he’s AB positive!  I didn’t have to be so strict about transfusions.”

“Right,” says Simmons faintly.  Much like a person about to faint.

“Are you going to faint?  Please lay down on the ground if you feel like you will, I really don’t want to have to deal with another concussion on top of everything else.”  When she turns around Simmons is on the floor staring up at the ceiling, so that’s good.  He can follow instructions pretty well.  

Dr. Grey lets him lie down there for a while because it seems to make him feel better, but she’s going on her thirty-third hour awake and her twenty-fifth without food, so she leaves briefly to take a nap and eat a ration bar.  When she comes back a few hours later Simmons is still on the floor, medical personnel milling around him and monitoring Grif a little more closely than necessary.

“He was already on the floor when he passed out,” Bryers tells her.  “Captain Grif flatlined, we had to resuscitate.  He was sort of in the way but we didn’t have time to move him.”

“I’ll have someone collect him and take him back to recovery,” Dr. Grey tells them, and goes over the logs.  “This _is_ a problem.  That heart has taken quite a bit of abuse.  A lot more than it's used to, anyway!”

“Should we see if we can locate a temp pacemaker, Dr. Grey?  There might not always be someone available.”

“Hmm.”  Dr. Grey tapped her chin.

“Hmmm,” echoes Simmons from the ground, rolling over onto his side.

“Oh!  Good.  We won’t have to get a dolly.  Simmons, I have to request that you return to recovery.”

Simmons takes a moment to remember why he was on the floor.  “Is Grif all right?!”

“‘All right’ would be awfully generous.  He’s alive, if that’s what you’re asking.    _However_ , your lying on the floor didn’t exactly help to keep him that way, so I’ll have to ask you to go back to your room please!”  It was harsh.  Dr. Grey knew it was harsh and maybe part of it was because she was tired and still hungry, but she has too much work to do and not enough time to do it in.  She still has to figure out how to wake Tucker, Caboose’s first psychological assessment should be very soon and it’s going to be rough, Agents Washington and Carolina have once again put themselves into overdrive re: damage control but have run out of damage to control and are now fruitlessly spinning their wheels and likely stressing out everyone else they come into contact with.  If Dr. Grey had more time and less respect for their boundaries, she’d have focused her next research paper on the psychological effects Project Freelancer had on its participants.

This is on top of all the wounded brought in from the battlefield with the Mantis androids and the remaining pirates and the day-to-day injuries that occur by simply existing.  She doesn’t have the room, the supplies or the time to deal with worried friends, partners or family.

Regardless of how harsh it was, Simmons seems to have gotten the point given by the way he slowly pulls himself up and tucks the crutch back under his arm.  “Dr. Grey,” he starts, voice weak and wavering and thin and high with shock.

Emily turns to face him.  “I’ll save him, Captain Simmons.”  She puts as much smile into her voice as she can.  Confidence is key.  “Bet on it.”  She won’t say it to a patient, ever, but she’s worried too.

Simmons watches the machines breathe for Grif before he turns and hobbles out of the room.

 

* * *

 

“Tell me what you found again.”  Carolina’s voice is low and dangerous and Wash sticks to her shoulder like glue.  She despises it.  She doesn’t need support, she needs a firm answer.

The tech shifts nervously before turning the monitor around, like the lines of code are going to make any fucking sense to her.  “It’s- I don’t know for sure without seeing the source files but from what I can tell, it’s like…remains.”

“Epsilon’s,” Carolina clarifies flatly.

The tech shifts again.  “It- there’s just subroutines.  Complex, sure, but dumb.  No self-awareness.”  The tech twists her hands nervously.  “Look I can’t give you any answers for sure, I never finished my internship-”

Carolina cuts her off.  “What you’re saying is that he’s not in there.  Which means he could have just- written instructions, left them behind and jumped somewhere else.  You know he can do that, right?”

“Carolina,” Wash mutters.

Carolina shoots him a glare over her shoulder.  “He _can_.”

“He left messages.”  The tech turns and fumbles for some data storage chips, the kinds with little crystal projectors inside.  She holds them out; each is labeled.  “I didn’t- I only watched enough to figure out who they were for, I swear.  But it sounded- I mean, it looked like-”

“That’s enough.”  Carolina’s voice is crisp.  She doesn’t take the chips.  Wash watches her before moving to take them instead.

Carolina hears Wash thank the tech behind her as she turns on her heel and strides out.

 

* * *

 

A message from a nearby FTL comm buoy comes in on the communications tower not even two days after the Staff of Charon’s assault.  Kimball’s soldiers relay the message to her with obvious hope and elation, but the general isn’t so optimistic.

_UNSC forces inbound with supplies and personnel.  Please have all high-ranking officers ready for debrief._

That would be just her and Dr. Emily Grey.  They would somehow have to explain everything; the civil war, the mercenaries, Hargrove’s involvement and they would have to do it to the organization that dumped a bunch of colonists onto this rock not even two full generations ago and then promptly forgot about them.  War with the Covenant notwithstanding, that stings.

She’ll thank them for the supplies, at least.  This one time, she’d like to allow Grif to eat as much as he can manage. If he survives.

The list of casualties is long enough already.  Not even counting those killed during the civil war, the list is long and no one in the UNSC will care about it like she does (and how much of that blame should she shoulder? All?  None?  Felix and Locus may have kept the game going, but the Feds will remember who ordered her men to pull the trigger).  The dead will be statistics.  Numbers to use in the trial against Hargrove, if he’s ever found.  Her predecessors will be numbers, Donald Doyle will be a number.

Their government is in shambles.  She might have managed to unite them for one last push, but Kimball isn’t fool enough to believe that their troubles are near over.  There are going to be dissidents.  The UNSC will evaluate the situation and determine whether or not a complete gutting of the command structure will be necessary.  Chorus has its own rights, of course, but years of internal strife isn’t exactly a glowing representation of ample leadership.

Does she even want to lead all of Chorus?

These are the questions that keep her up at night as she ticks down the days to the ship’s arrival.

 

* * *

 

Over the next few days Carolina works.  She gets _results_.  She gets an actual mission report out of Simmons, though it takes the last shreds of her patience.  She watches the general message Epsilon leaves for them with Washington, steeling her heart against it and just listening for information, intel, _data_ , compartmentalizing all the rest for later analysis.

Epsilon says _this is my last stop_ and her heart snaps closed like a bear trap.  She’s dealt with loss before.  Nevermind that this is the first time she’s ever heard a goodbye.  Maybe that’s why Epsilon made it, or maybe he was just going back to his roots.  Memories.  Making and keeping them.

She plans the search for Hargrove, but with the message from the UNSC concerning their imminent arrival the search is put on backburner.  He can’t leave the planet without a ship and the only working ships are all in Kimball’s possession.  Granted, Hargrove could fall off a cliff and die somewhere before he’s found (a death too kind for him, Carolina thinks) but he’s low priority.  Keeping their own people alive and together comes first.

Carolina takes a long time to accept that.  Kimball is the one who helps her, staring up at the picture of Doyle in her office and muttering about how she barely had enough people upright to guard the gates, let alone to authorize a manhunt.

“I’ll do it alone,” Carolina had said firmly, as if she were the one giving orders again.  She supposed she could be; she wasn’t one of Kimball’s soldiers, more of a consultant.  She could pack a bag and be gone and Kimball could do nothing to stop her.

“I think you’ve done enough of that to last you a lifetime,” Kimball had replied quietly and it was her eyes and the tone of her voice that kept Carolina there.  She had lost so many people in the last fight.  Carolina wasn’t the only one trying to keep all her pieces from tumbling out, like a footlocker stuffed too full.

Carolina said this instead: “What do you need me to do?”

Kimball had never looked so grateful.

 

* * *

 

“They keep giving me cards and stuff,” Simmons mutters as he dumps another handful of colorful envelopes onto Grif’s bed.  “Dr. Grey said she can’t have them in the ICU.  Health hazard, there’s a bug going around, something.”

“I’m sure he’ll be happy to see them all once he’s out of the hospital!” Donut chirps, leaning heavily on his crutches.

No he won’t.  If he doesn’t just lay down on them because he’s too lazy to move them around first, Simmons can bet the damn things will go right into the trash.   _Gratitude is too much work to deal with_ , Grif had said to him once, blowing smoke rings up toward an unsetting sun.   _People expect stuff out of you after that.  You gotta keep expectations low._

Simmons blinks past the sudden blur in his vision.  “Maybe don’t get fucking shot trying to save the day then.”

“Huh?”

“Grif’s just an idiot.”  Simmons swipes a hand over his human eye.

“Oh.”  Donut looks down at the cards.  “Well, if you don’t think he’ll like these, why don’t you give him something he’d be happier to see?”

Simmons sniffs and glances over at Donut.  “…I’ll need you to distract the cooks for me for a minute.”

Donut wobbles when he salutes, grinning.  “Can do!  Should I go with satin or mesh?”

“Oh my god, neither.”

 

* * *

 

_Hey Caboose._

“Hello Church,” Caboose whispers.  He keeps his hands cupped around Church’s avatar, like a secret.  It doesn’t talk like Church did, doesn’t answer him or ask new things, but sometimes if Caboose lets himself forget it’s just as good.  He can just let himself forget.

_First, promise me you won’t let anybody else see this.  I got a rep to keep._

Caboose hugs the chip to his cheek, closing his eyes.  The hologram fizzes and breaks until he pulls it back away.  “I promise, Church.”  

_There’s a special job I need done that only you can do, buddy. It's about Carolina._

 

* * *

 

Wash holds his pounding head as Tucker shivers in his blankets.  He doesn’t even notice when they whisper the same thing.

_Allison, Allison, Allison…_

 

* * *

 

Carolina is the first thing Grif sees when he wakes.

  



End file.
